Just Another Day In Paradise

This morning on my walk I found myself thinking how in the world did I end up here?  If you would have asked me 5 years ago where I would be today, I do not think my answer would be living in Hawaii with a husband who is in the military.  Now that I am here, I could not picture my life any other way!  It is truly amazing how God's plans for little ol' me blew my own plans out of the water!  I am thrilled for this adventure and we are totally trusting in the fact that God has us all the way out here in Hawaii for a reason.

As requested by my wonderful father, pictures, pictures, and more pictures of Hawaii!  He really wants pictures of the big waves, but I do not have any of those YET, but I will, don't you worry!

So this past weekend, we decided to go on a "hike."  I thought since it was a paved trail, it would be a good place to start our first attempt at hiking there.  We went to the Makapu'u Point Trail, which is a trail made up of the old access road to the Makapu'u Lighthouse.  This lighthouse was built in 1909 and is now off limits to tour.  The lighthouse is still working and you are able to see the blinking light from our house.  Anyways, the hike was breathtaking, in more ways than one!  It was a gradual climb to the top with the warm sunshine beating down on us the whole way!  The view at the top was worth the huffing and puffing on the way up!  We even saw a few whales once we were at the top!  We saw lots of blowholes and every once in a while we would see a fin pop up!  Unfortunately, they were not super active, but for our first trip, I was happy to see just a glimpse of the whales.  They are active in the Hawaiian waters from about November to May.

Now for the best part, the pictures!

Let's Go Exploring!

Koko Crater

And we're off!

Mommy and Micah

Isn't God's creation absolutely amazing?

Far off in the distance you can see a "hill," our house is located at the bottom of that.

Straight down from the top, look at that blue blue blue water!

We made it to the top!

Sleeping baby, tired dogs

Snoozing away!  He may not remember it, but he has seen the coolest things in his little lifetime!

If you look closely, you can see people swimming in those pools, how awesome is that?  This has been added to my Hawaii bucket list!  We figured with dogs and a stroller, this may be a little difficult, so another day we will tackle this!

Makapu'u Lighthouse

Yup, that's a whale!

Chillin' in his stroller

Needless to say, after we got home, we all took a 2 hour nap...dogs included!

Lesson learned this week:  WEAR SUNSCREEN!  When I looked up this trail online, it even said make sure to bring lots of water and wear sunscreen.  I brought the water and put sunscreen on my face, but neglected to put it elsewhere.  I now have shoulders that are red as a beet!  Oooops, I guess the sun is a bit hotter here!  I am trying not to live up to my last name here, I want to have a little color!  Don't worry, I did put sunscreen on Micah!